eli halpin

here are some beautiful paintings made by an old friend from a decade ago. i recently found her website. she lives in baltimore and makes her living selling her paintings. i like these....

let's go surfboarding

somewhere along the way the middle of surfing was gutted, knife through belly, guts of normal persons spilling out into the road pulled behind some kind of over done yellow sport utility machine or cherry vintage woody topped with thomas campbell and his heavy quiver of $1400 dollar heavy logs or some 14 year old kid from san clemente living out of his mom's 2 bedroom apartment feigning poverty in the name of surf videos so that yet again they can suck dry the last juices of surfing's soul...
here and now it feels as though the middle of surfing is sandwiched between aging men who have withered beneath the weight of 401k's and keepingupwiththejoneses hauling prisine epoxy takayama 2+1 machine tooled longboards out of double garages onto shiny cars reminiscing about san-o 1963 how it used to be and now it's all so cheesy, fading sunlit backgrounds with bad jazz and hypercontrast in the footage and nostalgia puking on itself like no-one's business...
or else it's those 13 year old towheads from so-cal so broke and stokened that they had to make a movie about it wherein they patronize homelessness and panhandling and the utmost limits of purely incredible naivete under mom's wing, that blessed wing that never stops sheltering, naivete that allows for the belief that surfing in southern california and making silly movies with bruce brownesque narration will somehow redeem all the other self-centered nonsense that surf culture somehow fosters.

the quiet majority sits tonight, this morning, tomorrow, in un-cool cars looking through old binoculars at unknown waves, or overcrowded waves, feeling the frustration of real life creep in from time to time, and yes, still, there is time to surf. there is always time to surf without the bad jazz or the ironic tee shirt or the newest oldest vintage mollusk board. yeah, the oil needs to be changed. the dogs need a walk and the laundry is drying on the rack. there are whales out there tonight, and there is time.

so, you like...

...the tropics?

you've come to the wrong place, friends. the frigid sand-colored closeout clamshell barrels from hell are neither warm nor welcoming this morning. not the 3 inches of water that the waves were breaking into, nor the stong current pulling through crab holes towards the jetty.

neither the grey sky, nor the chill breeze.

i am reaching for anything. suiting up in the house to avoid the cold. suiting up in the patagonia, the R4, $$$$ , yeah, that suit, wooly goodness, hard on the bank account but 98.6 inside, and yet, even with all of this over-priced luxury comfort, nothing can peel my bootied feet from where i am entrenched, staring into this complete crap hole of a "surf break" wondering how will i ever get my ass into the water? how will i paddle a 9'2" hull through hollow, shallow tubes? and the better question: why? i finally resolve to bag the plan. surfing is for surfers.

empty and cold

empty and cold.
self help is this thing.
99% chance of participation.
human contact: zero.

dont mind the mammals
the black rocks,
the strong wind
the pull of mortality.

before you know yourself
let it take you.

"a wave that doesnt f@&#$ one over"

dear god. please give me a wave that wont f#@% with me.

love,

karmic voyager.

p.s....

i mean, can you give us one in oregon please?

thx.

p.p.s...

maybe a good camera too, so my poor blog patrons don't break up with me? a camera that has the features of zoom, and focus??

xoxo

lightness

i love waking up to bright light, contrasting shadows. (this doesn't happen much in oregon...)

i love being on a wave, looking down the line and realizing, "hey, this waves isn't going to fuck me over!" (this, also, doesn't happen often in oregon).

i love low-budget oregon surf films, their honesty and humility, the accurate portrayal of life

here.

i love longboarding.

i love surfboarding.

i love waveriding.

i love the sea, its perimeter, its inhabitants, its moods.